LITERARY NOTICES. 



563 



times of wholesale piracy of the valuable 

 works of foreign authors, that Mr. Spencer 

 will continue to be paid by the publishers 

 on this cheap edition of his " Education " 

 just as he has been paid by them from the 

 beginning on all his other publications. 



New Departures in Collegiate Control 

 and Culture. Bv Rev. Caleb Mills. 

 New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. Pp. 50. 

 Price, 30 cents. 



The Rev. Caleb Mills, a graduate of Dart- 

 mouth College and of Andover Theological 

 Seminary, was for forty years Professor of 

 Greek at Wabash College, Indiana. He be- 

 came the first Superintendent of Schools in 

 that State, and so impressed his views upon 

 its people as to earn the flattering title of 

 "Father" of the Indiana common -school 

 system. He died last October, and left this 

 essay on the higher education as a last mes- 

 sage to scholars and the people, and his 

 friend Henry B. Carrington has seen it 

 through the press in a very careless way. 



The paper is mainly an argument on col- 

 lege methods with reference to alleged mod- 

 ern improvements in the studies and the man- 

 agement of these institutions. Mr. Mills 

 clings tenaciously to the traditions, and stren- 

 uously resists all the new-fangled notions 

 about optional studies and the introduction of 

 modern languages, scientific branches, and 

 practical knowledge into the collegiate cur- 

 riculum. Only classics and the dead lan- 

 guages, he maintains, can give a liberal edu- 

 cation, or that mental discipline which is 

 the real object to be gained in all higher 

 study. 



Mr. Mills appears to think that it is the 

 duty of colleges to go on to the end of time 

 threshing the old Latin and Greek straw, 

 although it has long since ceased to yield 

 the grain that is commonly supposed to be 

 the object of threshing. He seems, in fact, 

 to think it a great point gained that the 

 old dead straw no longer furnishes anything 

 that can be utilized. Grain and bread and 

 nourishment are sordid and vulgar things, 

 which the thresher should no longer think 

 of, and so the more empty and useless the 

 husks the better. The real thing is the mus- 

 cular exercise in the use of the flail, the no- 

 ble discipline of his arms; for, when he 

 has vigorously pounded the Greek and Latin 



litter for some years, he will get wonderful 

 vigor for other forms of exercise. 



Mr. Mills has various animated passages 

 in denunciation of college reforms, but we 

 can not see that he contributes anything im- 

 portant to the argument. The coolness with 

 which he throws aside all modern knowl- 

 edge, as of little or no account in higher ed- 

 ucation, is something surprising, and shows 

 the havoc that forty years of Greek may 

 make with a man's common sense. 



Mr. Mills is greatly concerned about the 

 use of the Bible as a college text-book ; and 

 the question of its more general employ- 

 ment in this way he declares to be " a live 

 issue," which involves little less than the 

 destinies of the nation. One of the bad 

 signs of collegiate degeneracy is a neglect 

 to use the Bible as a text-book. He informs 

 us that reliable statistics show that "of 

 forty-six colleges reporting, eighteen use it 

 in a proper sense as a text-book and twenty- 

 eight do not. Of twelve New England col- 

 leges, three use it and nine do not. Of 

 twenty-two Western institutions, nine use it 

 and thirteen do not give it a place in their 

 curriculum." 



Among the reasons for making the Bible 

 a text-book in our colleges, Mr. Mills thinks 

 that it would raise us in the estimation of 

 the pagans, whose example in this respect 

 he thinks it scandalous that we have failed 

 to follow. He says : " Were an American 

 Christian to go into the Mohammedan uni- 

 versity at Cairo, with its ten thousand stu- 

 dents, nothing there witnessed would im- 

 press him so deeply as the fact that so 

 much time is occupied and so much attention 

 given to the study of the Koran ; and a like 

 impression would be created were he to 

 make a similar visit to a corresponding in- 

 stitution in the sacred city of Benares, and 

 witness the exercises of that Brahmanical 

 college, and listen to the lectures of its 

 learned pundits on the Shasta literature 

 and religion ; if, then, returning to his na- 

 tive shores, he should make a corresponding 

 exploration of some of our colleges, proud 

 of their number of students and the spread 

 of their curricula, and ask the venerable 

 presidents thereof, Why has not the Bible 

 place, if not a prominent one, at least a po- 

 sition, in your course of study ? what reply 

 would he receive ? " 



